To the Editor:

The terrorist carnage at a Haifa restaurant should put to rest Secretary of State Colin Powell's insistence that Israel be more circumspect about the route of its security barrier ("Powell Criticizes Israel on Fence" page one, Oct. 4). As long as Palestinian leaders refuse to dismantle terrorist groups, Israel should build the fence as high, wide and deep in the West Bank as necessary to protect the security of all its people. Tellingly, the homicide bomber reached Haifa via an area where the fence had not yet been erected.

Powell's argument that the fence's intrusion into the West Bank prejudges the shape of an eventual Palestinian state doesn't hold water under present circumstances. If Israel were to build the barrier along the "temporary" 1949 armistice line, as Powell prefers, that also would prejudge final boundaries and signal that the entire West Bank should be part of a Palestinian state -- something that neither Security Council Resolution 242, nor the Oslo agreement, nor the U.S. road map demands.

Permanent borders are to be determined in peaceful political negotiations -- not imposed unilaterally by terrorists or a Powell edict. If Palestinian leaders object to the fence's route, let them muster the courage to tackle its cause -- terrorist violence. In the meantime, Israel has a perfect right to protect all its citizens, whether in Haifa or in Ariel on the West Bank.

Leo Rennert, Maryland